A JOINT concert by the Stratford Music Festival and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust helped to raise funds for the festival and prompted many people to sign up as Friends of the festival.

The concert in the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford featured an Irish duo, flautist Louisa Dennehy and harpist Jean Kelly, and Shakespearean actor Jeffrey Dench.

The duo performed pieces by Bach, Donizetti and Bizet and Jeffrey Dench, who has appeared in more than 60 RSC productions, gave readings of Shakespeare, Advice to an Audience from Manners and Rules of Good Society, as well as poems on a musical theme by William Barnes and Shel Silverstein.

The Stratford Music Festival runs from October 15 to 23 and events will be held throughout the year to ensure everyone is kept up to date with the plans.

Another fundraising concert will be held in St James's Church in Alveston on Wednesday, June 16, when the Russian Patriarchate Choir of Moscow will perform a sacred and secular programme ranging from works by Tchaikovsky and Gretchaninov to traditional Russian chants and folk songs.